When I talk to business owners, I’m often surprised how many don’t realize that their content strategy and marketing efforts have to be in sync with their business goals. There’s a strange disconnect between marketing and business – and I attribute that to the discordant relationship between sales, marketing and profitability.
Now you can tell me that they work together – especially when you’re a solo business owner or a small team. But the thing is that even if they “work” together, they aren’t fully aligned.
Why are content strategy and business goal alignment important to me?
I’ve seen this a lot of times in my previous small biz (employee) life where the need to make more sales drives on-the-fly decisions. Business owners hear customer feedback and suddenly they want to change their entire direction in order to capitalize on that opportunity. Or maybe you forgot about a holiday and just assumed you could toss out some content for a promo less than a week before and hope for the best.
This sounds like a great idea, right? Just go for it?
No. As a marketer, this is probably one of the more frustrating things that happen in my work day.
Why?
Because I create marketing strategies – content strategies – that are designed to push initiatives forward. They are part of a journey that we are taking our clients on, with pieces that work together to meet the previously outlined business goals.
When you make a split-second decision or you haven’t planned for something – it throws everything off and you won’t get the results you’re hoping for.
Long story short: you won’t hit your business goals.
Without going into too many details, the sales/marketing disconnect happened way too often in my last corporate job. It became chaotic. A stream of continuously moving targets that we could never see through to the end.
And the most frustrating part?
Our clients were so confused.
Why? Because we’d meet, we’d align our business goal with the marketing efforts, make sure our messaging was on point for a given period, and then… someone would blow it. Not always… but often enough.
Yup. By the time I was checking in with our customers asking if they needed any marketing materials, any additional support to promote our products in their store, they’d be (re)educating me on how excited they were about our products. The worst part: their message was very different that what our team had agreed on in our strategy meetings.
So, why am I telling you about my content strategy woes?
To save you from chaos! – most importantly. And to help you plan for your success.
Fall is coming, this is the perfect time to start creating your content marketing strategy. Summers are usually quieter, so there is a little more forgiveness in your schedule to create or outsource the content you need.
I know what you’re thinking:
That’s great, Viv. Wax on about content strategy without giving us anything helpful we can use.
Well, you’re in luck. I want to help you get your content strategy together. My personal experience is that once September hits, the haze of summer wears off like sunscreen in a swimming pool.
So LFG!
Pre-game your planning for your content strategy
The first thing I want you to do before jumping into creating, thinking of, planning any content is:
Pull up a calendar for the next few months and earmark the important dates.
Write them out on a piece of paper, a sticky note, a Google doc – whatever it is that you need to keep track of the dates.
There will probably be quite a few of them that you will want to pay special attention to in the months ahead.
Now. Dates aside, we’re going to look at what you want to achieve in your business within those months.
Content strategy step one is knowing your business goals
Most small business goals relate to financial, growth and awareness. Let’s break those down quickly:
- Financial: How much revenue can you make and how to maximize it.
- Growth: How can you gain more customers? How do you expand your offerings?
- Awareness: How do you improve your brand presence and visibility
(Yes, I know there are other goals out there, I’m sticking to these for the sake of simplicity. If you have other thoughts – or need help building around other ideas, just send me a message and we can work it out.)
Business goal set up for your content strategy
Write out your business goals. You want these to be specific, realistic, and attainable. Business growth is a long game, not a sprint.
Example:
- Double your newsletter subscribers (awareness)
- Launch a new service/product in time for the holidays (growth)
- Sign 5 new clients (financial)
Set a target date where you wish to have achieved the goal by. An easy way to look at this is to have it achievable in and around the timeframe of your strategy. Bookending your business goals with a start and end date will give you a good idea of how you are doing.
And for you silly peeps: Don’t add a target date for a goal you already know you’ve achieved or are very close to achieving. This exercise is meant to help you move your business forward. It’s not meant to give you the quick dopamine rush of an easy accomplishment. Though, please celebrate that goal you’re about to cross off, just not on this list.
Identify the metrics you will use to measure your success.
This is it for business goals. Write them out – don’t leave them in your head. They are useless there – you know I’m right.
Content strategy step two is knowing your clients
The next thing I would like you to do is get to know who your dream and fringe clients.
Knowing your intended audience is a valuable part of building any strategy. It give you insight into the inner workings of the people you want to work with or to buy your products. And it also makes it easy for you to make small adjustments based on your findings.
To make this part a easier, I made a nifty little Dream Client Workbook. Definitely have a look at it and fill it out.
That said, you will want to know things like gender, age, income, education and employment status. But you also want to dive into interests, technology uses, values, priorities.
The more information you can glean about your clients the easier it is to talk to them. Remember, you’re building a content strategy – and your content is about how you engage with your clients.
To be able to meet your business goals – and align your content marketing you need to know who you are targeting with your business.
So, fill out the workbook. Ask me questions if you have any.
Where do you take the content strategy from here?
Good question!
This is part one. Sad, I know. But I don’t want to overload you with all the work in one go.
Don’t worry, I will give you more on this subject – there are more parts to cover!
I’m also open for consultations if you need some help getting your strategy sorted and your business goals identified. It helps know these parts first before tackling the bigger parts like the content aspect.
